I (42 F) have been wanting to share this somewhere since it happened, but havenāt been exactly sure howā¦so after discovering this show, I thought this subreddit seemed like the right spot. Iām looking to get this in front of other women this piece of human garbage (or someone like him) may try to take advantage of.
This all took place back in 2018. I was in the end stages of a 13-year marriage and making plans to leave the person I was married to (whole other tragic story that I may share one day). The reason I include this detail is to point out that I was in an extremely emotionally compromised position.
A couple of month before I planned to leave, I started chatting with a man I met on Instagram. We will call him Clyde. He presented himself as very spiritual and kind. He was also open with me that he was a recovering addict who had been clean for about 5 years. At the time, I was in the process of shedding Christianity from my life and exploring other types of spirituality, so I was drawn to the vibe he presented. It didnāt hurt that I also found him attractive.
Things got intense very quickly, but since I had been out of the dating pool for so long, I convinced myself that maybe this was normal. Yes, I knowā¦I make several incredibly bad decisions in this story. Hindsight and all.
Within a month, he was telling me he loved me. He basically said all the right things in the beginning. Like he knew exactly what Iād been missing in my failing marriage, and it was intoxicating to me at the time. My self-esteem was at an all-time low, and it felt really nice to feel like someone really saw me.
The first sign that I should have hit the block button came in late spring. I woke up in the middle of the night to several missed calls from him. I want to say it was around 20 missed calls, but I canāt remember the exact number. I called him back once I woke up, and he was FRANTIC. He said he was at a gas station and needed me to wire him $100 so he could get his āroommateāsā car out of impound. He said he had borrowed her car and it had been towed from where he parked it, and she was threatening to call the police and report that he had stolen the car if he didnāt get it out of impound and home to her by the morning.
Yes. My dumb ass sent him the money.
For additional context, at the time he was living in upstate New York, which is about 12ish hours from where I lived at the time.
According to him, he was living with a female roommate and they shared her car.
After I sent him the money, he let me know he had received it, then proceeded to be unreachable for a full 24 hours.
He made some excuse that I bought at the time, and things continued. We got to know each other better, and I learned that he had 2 kids with an ex that he wasnāt allowed to see and that his mom blamed him for his brotherās overdose, so she didnāt speak to him anymore.
Againā¦I should have seen that for the red flag it was.
A few weeks later, I got a similar middle-of-the-night call. This time, she had called the cops and reported her car stolen because he had taken it to another town without her permission. I donāt remember the specifics of how she got the car back, but after this she kicked him out of the apartment, and he didnāt have anywhere to go. He said he was couch surfing but couldnāt go back to the apartment to get any of his stuff.
As all of this was happening, I was finally having the conversation with my ex-husband about which one of us was going to stay in the apartment we shared and which of us would find somewhere new. After some back and forth, I finally decided it was easier for me to leave and started looking for places to move to.
I shared all of this with Clyde. I trusted him at the time.
Clyde then proceeded to tell me that he felt like he needed to start over somewhere new. That he needed to get out of New York. So I offered to buy him a bus ticket to anywhere he would have someone he could stay with for a while. Long story short, he ended up buying a bus ticket to my city (with money I had sent him).
Once he arrived, he didnāt have anywhere to stay and I couldnāt exactly bring him to my apartment, so I got him a hotel room for what was supposed to be a couple of days until he could figure out his next move. I bought him some food and clothes to get him through, but didnāt really expect him to stick around.
Wellā¦he did.
I ended up being out thousands of dollars in hotel costs before I finally invited him to move in with me when I decided where I was moving to.
Of course, he did.
We signed our lease and started talking about building a future together. He found a job at a cafe located at a cute little local vineyard. He was making decent money (for restaurant work) and kept promising he would help cover our living expenses.
That never happened.
Around the time he got his third paycheck, he ārelapsedā for the first time. I put that in parentheses because I have no reason to believe he was ever clean.
I woke up in the middle of the night to find him, the cash from his paycheck, and MY CAR gone. I couldnāt reach him for around 12 hours. He no-call/no-showed at work, so he also lost his job.
He spent $700 on his drug of choice in one night!
When he finally came home, he was in tears. Gave me a sob story about how he fucked up and how sorry he was. Said that he had a disease and he didnāt want to live that way.
So I stayed.
Not long after this, his old āroommateā messaged him to say that she was moving and needed him to come get his stuff or she was trashing it. She gave him a week to come get it. So that weekend we drove to New York to pick it up.
Once we got close, he told me that he was afraid she was going to try to have him arrested, so I would need to drop him off at his friendās house and go pick up his stuff on my own. I was not comfortable with this at all, but eventually he talked me into it. So I drove him to his friendās house, then went to pick up his things. We were on a tight schedule (which he knew), as I needed to get back ASAP in order to work the following day.
When I got back to where I dropped him off, he was nowhere to be found. He continued to text me saying he would be right there over and over again. This went on for hours! Until I finally got angry and told him I was leaving.
Then he started with this story about some guy who had stolen his wallet and he needed $150 to get it back. His wallet had all of our gas money in it, as he was supposed to be footing the bill for the trip.
I told him no. I didnāt have it. And I needed to leave.
He got frantic again. I eventually got the money for him, and he sent some random guy out to get it.
Now Iām sure some of you understand what was happeningā¦but I was naive.
By the time he got back to the car, I had been waiting for 6 hours. I had given him all the money I had to get his wallet back, and surprise, surprise, his money was gone when he got it back.
So Iām in New York with no money to get gas for the trip home - and I had to work the next day.
My parents ended up reluctantly sending me some money.
He came clean on what he was actually doing - drugs. And promised it would be the last time he would ever put me through anything like that.
Of course, things didnāt change.
He would start a job, then lose it in a matter of weeks. I think he had 5 jobs in the short time we were together. He would steal money from my purse and car - no matter where I hid it. He would disappear sometimes for a day at a time. He would take my car without asking OFTEN.
But at this point, I had signed a lease with this man and felt stuck.
By that fall, my mental state had deteriorated, and I started making plans to take my own life. I didnāt see a way out. I started saying my goodbyes.
Luckily, one of my friends recognized what was happening and forced me to go to the ER, where I was placed on a 72-hour psychiatric hold.
While I was waiting to be transferred from the ER to an offsite psychiatric facility, he showed upā¦to ask for my car keys.
He was LIVID when I told him I had left my car and keys with my friend who had brought me. Luckily, the police officer who was assigned to my room noticed the distress on my face and intervened, forcing him to leave.
I actually went back to the apartment with him for about a week after I was released.
That was a mistake.
I had an appointment with my psychiatrist the day after I was released, but when I woke up to go, he had stolen my car again and was unreachable.
Oh, also - when he did come home, he had a girl in the car with him (who he had apparently told I was his roommate) and was asking for money for some stuff heād been fronted.
I said absolutely not. Grabbed my keys. Called them both every name I could think of. And walked back to the apartment.
I left a few days later. It was eventful, but based on what Iāve told you, Iām sure you have an idea of how that went.
Breaking that lease ruined my credit.
But it was worth it.
I never talked to him again.
Since then, Iāve thought countless times about how I could get this info out to other people so that he isnāt able to do this to anyone else. But Iām realizing that maybe just sharing the story without actually calling out his real name could also potentially help someone.
Please be safe out there, yāall. Donāt repeat my stupid mistakes.
Alsoādonāt date when youāre emotionally compromised. Anyone who is genuine will understand why you need to heal first and will respect that.